Curriculum

A page from our headstart agenda

I’m noticing the topic of conversation this week among homeschoolers has been curriculum. And since the conventional school year is about to begin (some schools here started this Wednesday), a hot topic is how to save money on your materials. For those of you who don’t homeschool but read this anyway, imagine back-to-school shopping, but include all of the stuff the school provides, too. Keep in mind, the state doesn’t consider us part of its budget, so we have to find our own resources like textbooks and chemistry sets.

My kids are young. We did some head-start work through spring and summer, and we’re starting our first full year of lessons this fall. So, textbooks aren’t a concern yet. Instead, we need workbooks, for which I can mostly find free, printable versions. And there is no strict curriculum, yet. We have lessons, but they’re usually dictated by what my kids are interested in learning that day, and are generally kept pretty short, so they don’t lose focus.

This year, I plan to cover the following topics:

Reading: We started on this in our head-start period. We will spend more time working on it this year, and we’ll probably be spending an increasing amount of time at the library. We have a lot of books, here. Really, I barely have space for them all. But I think exposure to the library is positive.

Writing: We also worked on this in the last several months, as you may have gathered from my last blog. They’re getting fairly good at it, but still require reference sheets to get each letter right and need practice. I also thing reading and writing go hand-in-hand and I would like for them to start writing words by the end of the term.

Basic Math: Some work has been done on this already. They’ve established the method of double-digit counting, and know the concepts of addition, subtraction, and multiplication. But, here again, practice. We use Khan Academy quite a bit, and I’m thinking about incorporating “bedtime math” to see if I can foster more interest. 
http://khanacademy.org
http://bedtimemathproblem.org/

Science: We will mostly be focusing on the visible, physical world. There are a lot of great resources for this, which is good because my kids’ interests are varied. I’m thinking we’ll have one structured and pre-planned science lesson per week, and anything else they feel like bringing up will be taken seriously and explored. This is a category we never seem to have a shortage of inspiration for. http://scienceforpreschoolers.com/

Culture: This year, I want to start talking about religion. We are not a religious family, but I want the kids to understand and appreciate religion, and be able to make their own (educated) decisions about it in the future. I’d also like to talk about the role of girls (since I have all daughters) throughout the world. And, since we’re here in America, we’ll talk about the history of our country and how it came to have the culture it does.

Sign Language: This one has been running its course for years, now. I started teaching them their alphabet with sign language so they could break up the “LMNOP” segment, visually. We’ve been using Signing Time, and I want to expand on this by taking some courses, myself. If I manage to go back to school part-time this year, it will probably be for this. http://www.signingtime.com/

Art: I’m not sure if this one counts. I don’t so much “teach” it. Mostly, I let them draw and color because, even if they don’t end up caring at all about art, and even if they can never draw anything more exciting than stick figures, it’s great practice for motor skills and not structured like writing practice. I consider it part of the curriculum because it needs devoted time, because it’s important. http://www.kiwicrates.com

Speech Therapy: One of the twins has a bit of a speech problem. I believe it's a tongue thrust problem, but we'll have to have it assessed. Then, I plan to work speech therapy into our structured time at home.

An important note: My homeschoolers are five-years-old. According to the state of Colorado, it is not required for them to enrolled in school at all for one more year. This means I don’t have to subject them to standardized testing yet. I also don’t have to take attendance, tabulate grades, or submit an official curriculum to a district school. http://www.cde.state.co.us/choice/homeschool_law.asp

However, since this is the year leading up to their official homeschooling, I’m trying to simulate (at least for myself) what this undertaking will eventually involve. I have a planner I printed and arranged for the coming months, that includes reading lists for each kid. I also have an attendance chart to keep track of our days and hours.

Colorado requires at least 172 days, averaging 4 hours of “educational contact” per day. Our current schedule will leave us short at 169 days, if we do nothing educational at all on the weekends. But I suppose you can imagine how likely that is. After all, weekends are our preferred field trip days.

I’m currently compiling a list of resources I use for our lessons, as well as free/cheap field trip (or just for fun) destinations for families in Denver. If you have any suggestions for either list, let me know. I can always use more information.

This post linked to iHomeschool's  *Not* back to homeschool blog hop